In the fall of 1980 I summoned just a little bit of courage and called a girl. I use the term “girl” on purpose. I was a “man” on the technicality of having turned 18 and graduated high school. She was still a girl because she had done neither.
This was someone I had been acquainted with while I was still a boy months earlier. We shared a mild mutual interest in each other, but had never managed to actually go on a date to see whether that interest would stay interesting.
My request was for her to accompany me somewhere that Saturday night. She was otherwise obligated, she said, to babysit.
Reasonable.
About 18 months earlier on some leadership weekend trip organized by pro free market adults I came up with the unprecedented idea that I would run for president of Covina High School. We all suspected two other students were planning to run. When I made my decision to run my intentions were noble, altruistic. I didn’t plan to win. I was running to make it easier for my favorite candidate to win. I had conjured solid reasoning for the decision, but I recognized eventually that I was seeking my own reward, to become more well known in the school.
Popular.
I wanted nothing more than that.
My favored candidate, though, didn’t buy into the idea and decided not to run. When I protested, her commitment became firm. She’d back me, but would not run herself, even if I backed out. So it was then I was presented with the idea that I should actually try to win. And it was then I began to imagine the benefits of winning.
Most popular.
It wasn’t hard for me to imagine winning. I was insecure, sure. But I knew that to win an election to student body president I didn’t have to be the most popular person on campus. I just had to be more popular than anyone else running. I campaigned well. I might have been only a slightly above average student generally, but I could have earned a doctorate in high school culture. Plus, my campaign sign was higher on the gym wall than my opponent’s. And I was not completely without charm. I won. And in that moment I grabbed onto the prize I had coveted ever since entering junior high school, when I found myself way down on the list of cool kids.
Eminence.
That meant more dates and more attention. Given all that, it wasn’t a great year for me. My dates seldom ended well, and those in the know will tell you I was not very good at being president. It is, in fact, one of those life lessons I’ve held for years whenever I get the not-so-serious notion that maybe I should run for office. At least if I did it now, which seems entirely improbable, I would know there is a job to do if I won. I would probably try to do that.
Probably.
Still, I got to be Valentine’s King, the highest form of admiration for a Covina High School senior boy. Eminence. Turkey of the Year was mine, too, though I didn’t know what to think of that. Though dating wasn’t ideal that year, I knew a boy or man really only has to be successful once for all the indignity to be worth it.
The year ended and I was surprised walking the graduation stage how relieved I was. I left high school with a plan, which I executed pretty well. I’d work a year at the Alpha Beta grocery store, head out on a Mormon mission, come home and go to BYU, where I’d get a degree and probably find a wife.
Early on as I executed my plan, I kept going to my alma mater’s football games. I had played with those seniors, and they were legitimately great. I was only working a full-time job, so I had Friday nights free.
What I forgot was when I was a high school student the alumni I respected and admired the most were those who left high school and were never seen on campus again. They would never return to the school for any reason. But the classes of 1981-83 kept seeing me at those games.
The girl I asked out when I had become a legal man was from the class of 1982. On the Saturday she and I were to go out I made alternate plans to hang out with friends, all of whom had graduated. On the way there I stopped to watch a different high school’s football game and there in the stands was the girl I had wanted to be with me that night.
Unless babysitting means hanging out with friends at a pretty social event, she wasn’t babysitting.
It hit me powerfully that whatever I thought about myself, and I held myself in high regard, my former schoolmates saw me as something else.
Loser.
I had a plan. I was executing it well. I didn’t share my former schoolmates’ opinion of me. And, if we’re to be honest, I can’t be certain what they thought of me at all. But I’m probably not wrong. Why else would someone I had only ever been mildly interested in anyway make up a story to avoid spending any time with me?
Confounded. Confused.
I knew that this singular setback had no bearing on my plan. Still, I spent the next few weeks pondering a question that faces us almost daily throughout our lives.
Now what?
This piece is the first installment of a story that will take a few more passes to complete. I know how it ends. Probably.
Ohhh the feeling of rejection!! I know it well. And whether it was kinder for the girl to lie at first, the humiliation of finding out it was a lie is worse than an upfront rejection. Yes, I know them both.
Whether or not you were a "good" ASB President, I suppose, is one most of your fellow students probably had no opinion of, in my experience. I don't think any of us thought about who was ASB President during the school year because if they did anything, good or bad, most of us were oblivious to it, other than there was no Coke in the drinking fountains and we still had to do homework!
Very reflective article.